Naruto: The Oncoming Storm
by rageing-goblin
Summary: A conversation after the battle of the bridge changes the entire future of the elemental nations, war is coming and the ninja villages ready themselves for the coming bloodshed. in the midst of this one genin begins the second task of the chunin exams with his teammates the closest thing he has to a family. will they take the next step in their career? will they even survive? NXI


**Naruto: the oncoming storm **

**Chapter one: A forest of monsters**

**Disclaimer:**** I do not in any shape or form own the rights to Naruto or Naruto Shippuden they belong to Masashi Kishimoto, Viz Manga and TV Tokyo no copyright infringement is intended.**

**A/N:**** This as it goes disregards almost everything that happens in the manga after the first exam and changes a lot of the content beforehand as well beware characters that you like may die and characters that you don't like may also die but no promises.**

"This is the arena for the second exam: training ground 44!" Anko pointed to the Giant forest surrounded by a fence behind her. "Also known as the Forrest of death!" she finished ominously. The chunin hopefuls muttered nervously amongst themselves.

Naruto looked up at the tree tops shielding his eyes from the sun and squinting. "It looks like a pretty creepy place." He heard Sakura mutter from behind him on his right; a chuckle brought his attention back to Anko. "You're about to find out why they call it the forest of death!" She Pronounced.

Naruto's expression was one of dubiousness. "Ooh, You're about to find out first hand why they call it the forest of death!" he mocked loudly doing a silly jig; He then pointed at her and shouted. "Like that's really gonna scare us! You're just trying to psych us out, and I'm not going to fall for it!"

Anko for her part just smiled pleasantly. "Oh really?" she posed. "You're pretty cocky, huh?" A kunai slipped into her hand from her sleeve and with flick of her wrist it shot right past Naruto's face and into the ground behind a grass ninja.

Naruto felt something warm and wet rubbing his cheek, Anko was behind him licking at the wound that she had made. "Heh! Your kind is always the first to go." She gave another lap at the crimson fluid. "Spilling all that rich, red, lovely, luscious blood…" she was interrupted by Naruto speaking softly. "I wonder how it tastes. Is it good?" her smile became vicious. "What was that Gaki?" She whispered into his ear her tone deadly; Naruto turned his head to look her in the eye, his eyes were glazed his nose twitching as if he was sniffing the air. "The blood, Is it good?" He whispered. Anko's smirk grew in to a blood thirsty grin. "Survive the forest and you'll see for yourself." She cooed in to his ear making him shiver and grabbed him by the collar and threw him to his teammates. "Looks like we have some really blood thirsty ones on our hands this time out!" she spoke out loudly. "Heh… Should be fun." She added almost as an afterthought.

As Sakura helped Naruto to his feet she whispered. "What was that?" Naruto looked her dead in the eye. "I couldn't help it. It has to do with what we talked about in wave, you know being closer to my instincts." He whispered back his hand hovering over his stomach, his teammates nodding after a moment.

**-: Flashback :- The day after the battle on the bridge. **

Naruto sat on the edge of the bank by Tazuna's home indulging in a pass time that he'd picked up from the third, smoking; not of a pipe though he never felt comfortable with one in his mouth, so he settled for cigarettes that he rolled himself roll-ups was the common term for them and he enjoyed them bare back in a thin paper.

He spoke with Kakashi earlier that day about channelling the fox's power on the bridge when he had thought Sasuke had died and as to what he should tell his teammates, Kakashi had suggested the truth. Stating that if he lied and said it was some sort of bloodline limit or some other bullshit and then they found out the truth from some less friendly party it could ruin the bond they shared, and after some back and forth between the two Naruto whole heartedly agreed.

And that is how Sakura and Sasuke found him sat on the bank deep in thought the roll-up dangling from his lips half smoked and extinguished, the kunai he had been sharpening resting on his lap with the whetstone as the sun began to set in the distance bathing the scene in an orange glow.

The two other members of team seven made their way over to their teammate; Sakura walking unassisted and Sasuke hobbling along on a pair of crutches still not fully recovered from his death like state from the day before. They sat either side of Naruto as he noticed their presence, re-lighting he smoke as he did and taking a long drag.

"I was born on the night the Kyubi attacked." He began after Sasuke had settled himself comfortably. "And for the longest time I had thought that was why the adults hated me, because I reminded them of what they lost; that was part of it I suppose, but it's not the whole reason. I didn't find that out until the night of the genin exam. Mizuki approached me after I had failed and told me he had a special way for me to pass and all id have to do was steal a certain scroll from the Hokage's tower and learn a technique from it and bang id be a genin; thinking back on it now it seems a little farfetched." He paused to flick his now smoked rollie into the sea.

"After I had stolen the scroll, learnt the Kage bushin no jutsu and Iruka-sensei confronted me, Mizuki attacked and after a few clashes with Iruka-sensei, he told me why the adults hated me." Naruto inspected the kunai he had been sharpening before returning it to the pouch on his leg. "Iruka-sensei begged him not to reveal it but Mizuki was so confident in his victory that he didn't care, he told me the truth of what happened to the Kyubi." He reached in to the left pocket of his jacket as his teammate's eyes widened at the prospect and pulled out a flask, popped the cork and took a swig of the brew within.

"You see, energy can't be created or destroyed only converted and stored; and that is what the Kyubi basically is sentient energy so the yondaime sealed the fox into the body of a newly born child." He took another swig from the flask and passed it to Sasuke. "I am that child." He finished and waited as this information sank in.

The three genin sat in silence for a few moments before Sasuke spoke. "That sucks." Naruto chuckled. "Thanks." They continued to discuss the matter a length long into the night and even moved on to other matters such as Sasuke's experience with the massacre of his clan and Sakura's unusual sexual orientation.

-: flashback ends:-

Their revelry was broken by Anko's voice "before we begin the second exam, there is something I have to hand out." This piqued the interest of the congregated genin. "They're consent forms; everyone has to sign one." She continued. "Why?!" came a voice that sounded an awful lot like Kiba.

Anko chuckled gleefully. "We want all the details covered before the first deaths occur. Sign before you go in so we can't be liable." She chuckled again. "You wouldn't want little old me to get in trouble, would you?" she asked a little too sweetly, casting her gaze across the congregation and lingering on Naruto when she heard him mutter. "Only, if we both get in some trouble." Anko gave him a wry smile and winked. "Play your card right, hotshot and we'll see." She said in a husky voice. Naruto gave her a roguish smile and was about to reply with some clever remark before Sakura bonked him on the head and told him. "Behave!"

Anko motioned for her proctors to hand out the forms and then addressed the chunin hopefuls once again. "First I'll explain what the second exam entails, then you can sign the forms." She paused for a moment to place her hands in her pockets. "with the other two members of your team, bring your signed forms to the hut behind me and submit them, got that? Now about the exam to put it simply it's a no-holds bared survival test." Most seemed happy with this fact, others not so much.

"Let's start with the topography of this training ground." Anko unrolled a scroll showing a map of the ground. "Training ground forty-four is bordered by a circular perimeter, interrupted at regular intervals by forty-four locked gates. The forest inside is bisected by a river and in the centre is a tower about six and a half miles from the gates the area is roughly one-hundred and thirty-three square miles. Within the confines of this carefully delineated area, you're going to undertake a mission scenario. During the course of this scenario, you may use any ninja arts or weapons you have at your disposal." She rolled up the scroll with a flick of her wrist and then retrieved a pair of smaller scrolls.

"It's a kind of fight-to-the-death version of 'capture the flag' or in this case 'capture the scroll'. There's a 'scroll of heaven' and a 'scroll of earth' and your objective is to acquire both by any means necessary. There is seventy-eight of you here, that's twenty-six three man teams." Anko raised her right hand. "Thirteen teams will start with the heaven scroll." She then raised her left hand. "And the other thirteen will start with the earth scroll, but you'll need both to pass. So your objectives are to hold on to your own scroll and get your hands on one of the other kind, and then bring them both to the tower at the centre. You have one-hundred and twenty hours in which to complete this task, exactly five days." She concluded.

"Now let's talk about the rules and what offences you can be disqualified for! Obviously, the teams that fail to reach the tower as a full three man cell carrying both a heaven and an earth scroll are out. So is any is any team that loses a member; whether to death or severe injury, and under no circumstances can you leave the perimeter of the training ground before the time limit expires, no recess, no time-outs you're in for the duration. Also you're forbidden to look at the contents of the scrolls until you're inside the tower! That's all the explanation you'll get." She stuffed the scrolls back into her jacket and continued to address them.

"We will trade one scroll at random for every three forms. When you've got yours, you will be lead to the gate you've been assigned. Everyone will begin at the same time. One final piece of advice, Stay alive!" it was a tense twenty minutes waiting for the distribution booth to be set up the chunin hopefuls had separated in to different groups, but team seven kept calm and apart from all of them even the other rookie teams, Sasuke whom activated his sharingan when Anko had shown the map of the training ground sketched out a copy for Sakura and Naruto to look over once inside the forest.

Naruto having sent off a shadow clone back into the village the second he had seen the forest was sitting doing the breathing exercises Kakashi had given him to balance his bloodlust and Sakura was checking over the teams equipment swearing when she noticed that her and Sasuke's kunai weren't as sharp as Naruto's but a few runs over with a whetstone fixed that.

Ten minutes into the wait Naruto's shadow clone returned with three small duffle bags and a small crate he then dumped them in front of team seven, gave a mocking salute to his creator and dispelled. Naruto opened his eyes and moved to the duffels, he grabbed one and read the tag. "Sasuke." he said as he threw the Uchiha one of them before grabbing the next and checking the tag. "Sakura." He repeated the action with the pinkette and then grabbed his own along with the crate placing it in the middle of the circle that they formed.

"Naruto, where did all this gear come from?" Sasuke asked as he pulled a standard Konoha uniform from his duffle; raising an eyebrow at the Uchiha crests upon each sleeve and on the back of the green flak jacket which was different from the ones he'd seen most jonin and chunin ware; this didn't have the neck pad and was overall less bulky. The blonde looked up from his duffle before answering. "I sent a clone to the quartermaster for a standard B-rank mission pack." His teammates just nodded accepting his answer and began to inspect their new kit. They quickly changed into the uniforms before opening the crate.

The crate contained four scrolls and four stacks of exploding tags; twenty per stack. the scrolls themselves contained; thirty throwing kunai, thirty mitsubishi spikes, thirty shuriken, two fighting kunai, twenty flash pellets, twenty smoke pellets, six pouches two empty two filled with a med-kit and two days of dry ration bars and two drop-leg pouches for the shuriken with sheathes for the fighting kunai, a radio transmitter with head set and a five meter spool of steel wire.

After inspecting the contents and deciding to use the fourth scroll as an emergency restock, they loaded and attached the pouches. Hey then each signed the consent forms and headed to the booth which had finished setting up moments before.

Team seven handed their consent forms to the chunin behind the desk and without even looking up from the list he was reading from game them a heaven scroll, and then said. "Konoha team seven, gate twelve." His voice was flat and bored obviously a Nara going by the tone and the black hair, as they left the tent another chunin noticeably a Inuzuka going by the large dog at his side lead them to their gate.

It took half an hour to get all the genin to their respective gates, it that time many such as team seven and team ten began to plan for their time in the forest, while others stood shaking fear/excitement of/for the slaughter to come. "the second exam begins now!" came Anko's voice came over the PA system and with that team seven and all the other participants shot through their gates and into the bloodbath to come.

A/N: there you go one first chapter of a brand new idea from the goblin of rage


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